Munson: 'A Year of Reading Sharon'

Husband helps book clubs launch yearlong memorial to late wife's love of reading

Jan. 19, 2014

Some of Sharon Kurns' favorite books sit on a table at Chris Mudge's home in Johnston on Thursday. Friends have chosen these books to remember Sharon, the quintessential bookworm who died in December 2012, by spreading her love of reading with a tribute titled 'A Year of Reading Sharon.' / Charlie Litchfield/The Register

Sarah Brown Wessling, the 2010 National Teacher of the Year, unveils the collection of books to be read in a yearlong tribute to Sharon Kurns, who died in December 2012.

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JOHNSTON, IA. — Dave Kurns in his more wistful moments sits at home and gazes at the hundreds of books that line the shelves of his office. The titles leave a lingering sense of the life and character of his wife, Sharon, the voracious reader who amassed this gradual bibliography of her own hopes and dreams.

Last week Dave Kurns, 53, searched the book spines until he found it: a worn soft-cover copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird” scribbled with phone numbers and random notes. This was Sharon’s favorite book.

Kurns carried the novel across the street to the house of his neighbor, Chris Mudge, where two different book clubs had gathered on a blustery winter night to launch a heartfelt yearlong memorial to his late wife.

Sharon was 53 when she died Dec. 23, 2012, just two quick months after she had been diagnosed with kidney cancer.

“A Year of Reading Sharon” aims to not only sustain her memory but pay forward Sharon’s love of books with 13 titles that connected her to family and friends. These books run the gamut from the children’s bedtime mantra “Goodnight Moon” to the 959 pages of “Gone With the Wind.” From self-help to science fiction.

Sharon was the quintessential soft-spoken bookworm who always juggled a few titles at once. She read hardcover, paperback, her Kindle and on her iPhone. She listened to audio books. She couldn’t resist a good read even in the middle of an Iowa State Cyclones football or basketball game.

Reading is a crucial comfort and centerpiece in funerals. Often we dwell on religious text such as Ecclesiastes 3: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die …”

What if this sense of shared memorial reading was unleashed from the sanctuary to be spread far and wide with a custom menu of secular classics and bestsellers?

Hence the bookworm evangelism of “A Year of Reading Sharon.”

The notion began with one of Sharon’s book club members, now living in South Carolina, who mailed a $200 gift card from the group and a letter to Sarah Brown Wessling.

You might recognize Wessling, an English teacher at Johnston High School, as the 2010 National Teacher of the Year. She was entreated to use the money “at your discretion toward the goal of helping children read, read well, and love doing it.”

Sharon had been a lifelong educator as a regional director at Heartland Area Education Agency. Wessling, serendipitously, taught both of the Kurnses’ children: son Dan, 26, and daughter Anna, 22. She also belongs to Mudge’s book club.

She brooded over how best to honor the request in Sharon’s memory.

Then “My Ideal Bookshelf” sparked a thought. In that book, famous figures muse on the “books that reflect their obsessions and ambitions and in many cases helped them find their way in the world.”

The project acknowledges how books and stories tend to slip off the page and into our everyday lives.

For instance, when Rahn-Blakeslee sat down in the Kurns home and Sharon revealed her cancer diagnosis, one of her first thoughts came from the novel “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”: The phrase “heavy boots” is a euphemism for feeling depressed that’s used repeatedly by the novel’s 9-year-old protagonist.

Receiving the news that a friend has been issued a death sentence is to slip on a pair of heavy boots.

Wessling last week talked about how Sharon’s love of reading was a “bridge of empathy, shared purpose and laughter” throughout her life. She interviewed Sharon’s family and friends to pinpoint the literary bridges.

She and Kurns switched on Sharon’s iPhone only to land on the page of the book Sharon had left unfinished when she died: “Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.” They paused in stunned silence, Kurns said. Appropriately enough, “Isaac’s Storm” will be the final book to be read this year.

Simple bookmarks and post cards are part of the clubs’ yearlong push, but so is social media. Wessling launched a Facebook page, Twitter feed (@yearofsharon) and a Good­Reads discussion group.

“Leave a book somewhere,” she also encouraged the 15 or so readers gathered in Mudge’s living room. “Send it to somebody. Donate a copy. Whatever makes sense to you.”

Was there any trepidation in dwelling on the grief over Sharon’s death for an entire year instead of the lighter mix of wine and witticisms common among book clubs? (Wine often is to book clubs what beer is to football tailgating.)

“I’m going to have grief all year whether I do this or not,” said best friend Rebecca Mc­Creary, who noted Sharon’s taste for an introspective, character-driven read.

Dave Kurns and Sharon met as students at ISU. He’s not as avid a reader as his wife was, and he must focus on one book at a time. His workdays as editor of Successful Farming magazine for Meredith in Des Moines tend to leave him avoiding extra reading at night.

But he looks forward to “A Year of Reading Sharon” as a path to less awkward, sorrowful conversations as a widower. Instead of focusing on the grief when the inevitable topic arises, he now has a reason to talk about what Sharon was like when she was alive and to pass along one of her favorite books.

Kurns sat among the circle of readers last week and declared it a “happy moment.”

“It’s fun for me to see her live on,” he said.

It also was a revelation to discover through this process how his wife had used books to communicate with their children. Wessling posed questions he never had thought to ask.

“To hear your kids articulate that sort of intimate relationship with their mother is really touching,” he said.

When Sharon might have lacked her own words to reach son Dan, she would dive into the science-fiction books he loved as fodder for conversation. So Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” is scheduled for May.

Sharing the experience of reading the same book, Dan said, drew him and his mom together.

Always the teacher, Wessling went so far last week as to bring a full page of discussion questions for “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee’s 1960 novel that won the Pulitzer Prize and stands as a landmark look at racism in the 20th century. Wessling also pointed out that “To Kill a Mockingbird” was the only book that Lee published — “one beautiful story that she had to tell,” as the teacher put it.

Kurns’ fingers grazed the pages of Sharon’s copy of the book as he spoke about his wife.

McCreary cautioned Kurns not to read “The Fault in Our Stars” in the immediate wake of Sharon’s death. The novel with its cast of cancer-stricken characters is narrated by a 16-year-old girl and patient. Mc­Creary could barely choke back the sobs to get through it when she borrowed Sharon’s paper copy in the weeks after she died.

But Kurns plans to crack open that heart-wrenching book this year; it’s scheduled for October, two years after her cancer diagnosis.

No doubt there will be tears on the page, but some are bound to be cathartic.

“It’s OK to cry when you’re happy, too, right?” Kurns said as he glanced around the circle at Sharon’s fellow bookworms.

So if you spot a derelict copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird” this year, stop to take a second look. There might be a note encouraging you to pick it up.

The hope is that Sharon’s memory never reaches its final page as her favorite books flutter around the globe, even if her life ended mid-plot.

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns, blog posts and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/munson. Connect with him on Facebook (Kyle Munson's Iowa) and Twitter (@KyleMunson).